Disarticulated Nomos

Abstract

The significance of the state of the water of the sacred Lake Baikal in Buryat Indigenous society on Olkhon Island is so great that it is accompanied by a series of canons. These are rooted in certain folk narratives that define the lake as the giver of life, saviour, and maker of meanings. However, environmental narratives produced by the Russian media regarding ecological challenges, influenced by the government’s shaky environmental policies, have presented Baikal as shifting from being a centre of good to a centre of evil. This image has resulted in a transformation of the normative universe among Olkhon’s Buryats, leaving them with a semantic change in their religious life and diminishing the sense of responsibility in Buryat society towards the lake.